Great Wall of China is Crumbling!

Have you visited the Great Wall of China yet? Plan Soon, before it could get too late!

One often thinks that the legendary wall is a single continuous structure built across the Korean border to Gobi desert. However, this engineering marvel is actually a series of stone fortifications that crawl across the country’s changing landscape.

Lots of broken steps on the Great Wall of China

The thousands of miles long wall which is now more than 2,000 years old in some places, has as much as 30% of the wall crumbling. According to a report by National Geographic, the man made structure is slowly reclaimed by the natural world, thereby lying into ruins.

The Chinese authorities have deployed a new tool to reach some of the most vulnerable sections of the ancient wall. The deteriorating portions that people have been completely cut off from or that remain too dangerous to traverse can be now detected by ‘Drones‘.

The drones have allowed Chinese authorities to map and measure sections of the wall, offering precise data that is already being used to rehabilitate a structure that is widely recognized as one of mankind’s greatest feats of engineering.

Data collected by the drones has helped workers build support structures for vulnerable sections of the wall. In May, the South China Morning Post reported that Intel’s Falcon 8+ drones were being used to capture “high-definition three dimensional images” of the Jiankou section of the wall, a badly weathered stretch constructed during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) that sits about 50 miles north of Beijing.

Zhao Peng, a Great Wall architect, told the BBC that the effort is far more complicated than merely reinforcing old walls with new stone and concrete.

“Some sections of the Great Wall are very dangerous,” Peng told the BBC. “Using drones, we can measure lengths and undulations.”

Watch Video captured by BBC demonstrating the use of drones over the Great Wall of China.